An article from the Financial Times journalist Edward Luce, which should be a wake-up call.

Donald Trump’s running mate opposes abortion and aid to Ukraine and says he would not have certified results of 2020 vote.

With Vance, Trump is doubling down on Maga

Ohio senator is an intelligent and forceful exponent of the Maga movement — and maybe also its future

If there were any doubts that Donald Trump would go full “America First” he banished them on Monday with his vice-presidential pick. JD Vance is the most high-profile Trumpian cheerleader among senior Republicans.

Trump could have held his nose and chosen Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, who gave him the biggest run for his money in the Republican primaries. Haley is a relative moderate on abortion. Selecting her, or a like-minded figure, would have signalled that he wanted to broaden his appeal to wavering suburban female Republicans.

Vance, by contrast, is an unapologetic Christian conservative. If Joe Biden can find a silver lining in the gathering storm clouds, Vance would be it. Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, is an effective campaigner on a woman’s right to choose. 

Opting for Vance is thus a sign that Trump is feeling very bullish. Vice-presidential picks rarely have a discernible impact on election outcomes. But they signal what the nominee is thinking. Biden chose the youngish mixed-race Harris in 2020 to balance the fact that he was an elderly white male. Trump, by contrast, is so confident of his party’s support that he chose the closest thing to a mini-me he could find.

Much will be made of the fact that Vance used to be a never-Trumper. He told a former college roommate in 2016 that Trump could be the “American Hitler”. Trumpism was “cultural heroin” to blue-collar America, he said. Democrats will try to make hay with Vance’s erstwhile loathing for his new boss.

It is ironic that Vance was at the forefront of those accusing Biden of having incited the attempted assassination of Trump this past Saturday. Unlike Vance, Biden has never likened Trump to Hitler. It is not hard to depict Vance as a rank opportunist who saw obeisance to Trump as the only path forward in today’s Republican party. There are also Vance’s close ties to Silicon Valley money. His 2022 Ohio Senate campaign was largely funded by Peter Thiel, the west coast venture capitalist and early Trump adopter. Vance’s selection was greeted enthusiastically by Elon Musk, a friend of Thiel, who only endorsed Trump two days earlier following his near miss in Pennsylvania.

It would be a negligent Democratic campaign that did not exploit the tension between Vance’s blue-collar roots, which are genuine, and his plutocratic sponsors.

But Vance is no pushover. Irrespective of his U-turn on Trump, he is an intelligent and forceful exponent of Trumpism. At 39, he can also claim to be its future. No Republican senator has done as much to sell the Heritage Foundation-organised Project 2025, which fleshes out Trumpism in great detail. Vance ticks all the boxes. He is a Christian nationalist, a critic of globalisation, a deep sceptic of Nato and a believer in the existence of the deep state, which he wants to dismantle. Haley does not fit any of those criteria.

His elevation may turn out to be helpful to Harris if she can exploit his record of supporting a national abortion ban. It would also be good news for Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Vance has consistently opposed providing further US military aid to Ukraine. But he goes much further than that. He is an avowed fan of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and a darling of that transatlantic far-right circuit.

In picking Vance, Trump is signalling two things. First he expects to win in November. Second, he wants to put the full Maga agenda into practice. Democrats will focus on Vance’s weaknesses and career opportunism, as they should. But they should also take note of Trump’s remarkable sense of confidence. It is not clear that it is misplaced.

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The reactionary words of Senator JD Vance, 2024 Vice-Presidential running mate of Donald Trump, 2024 General Election in the USA.

On Trump “What an honour it is to run alongside President Donald J Trump. He delivered peace and prosperity once, and with your help, he’ll do it again.” — X, July 16 2024 “Like a lot of other elite conservatives and elite liberals, I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration.” — New York Times, June 2024

“The elite Republican view of why people voted for Donald Trump is that Trump voters are stupid. I think the elite Democratic view is that Trump people were bigoted and immoral. And that’s probably still very much reflected in popular culture.” — Lunch with the Financial Times , February 2018

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” — Said to former law school roommate Josh McLaurin in 2016, according to screenshots shared by McLaurin

On the assassination attempt against Trump “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” — X, July 14 2024

On the 2020 election “I think the election was stolen from Trump.” — Said during a TV debate in April 2022

“If I had been vice-president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.” — Said on ABC News in February 2024, after he was asked if he would have sought to block the certification of the election results as then vice-president Mike Pence refused to do

On the January 6 Capitol rioters “These people are political prisoners, and their captivity is an assault on democracy.” — X, January 2022

On immigration “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racists for wanting to build Trump’s wall . . . Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” — April 2022 campaign ad written by Vance

“If you cannot hire illegal migrants to staff your hotels, then you have to go to one of the 7mn prime-age American men who are out of the labour force and find some way to re-engage them.” — New York Times, June 2024 On his upbringing “Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’ when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.” — From his memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, 2016

“Social mobility isn’t just about money and economics, it’s about a lifestyle change. The wealthy and the powerful aren’t just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores. When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst.” — ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, 2016

On the UK “I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over.” — Said at the National Conservatism Conference, July 10 2024

On Ukraine “There is frankly no good reason that aid from the US should be needed. Europe is made up of many great nations with productive economies. They ought to have the capacity to handle the conflict, but over decades they have become far too weak. America has been asked to fill the void at tremendous expense to its own citizens.” — FT opinion piece, February 2024

On abortion “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” — Spectrum News podcast, September 2021

On trade tariffs “We need to apply some broad-based tariffs, especially on goods coming in from China and not just solar panels and EV stuff. We need to protect American industries from all of the competition.” — CBS News, May 2024